The 0.1 horsepower push: How Scuderia Ferrari HP partnership drives Shell’s innovation 

[SINGAPORE] Formula One (F1)’s exacting and highly restrictive racing regulations serve as an important test bed for Scuderia Ferrari HP technical partner Shell, allowing it to create a “cycle of innovation”, the company said at a recent event in Singapore.

Shell executives and Scuderia Ferrari HP team members were speaking at the Powering Progress Together Forum at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre, which marked the energy major’s 135th Singapore anniversary.

In two separate on-stage engagements, Scuderia Ferrari HP team principal Frederic Vasseur and drivers Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc detailed how the F1 regulations serve as a commercial research and development test bed for both the team and Shell.

To meet the sustainable component requirements of the motorsport governing body FIA’s 2026 regulations, Shell said it has invested four years into developing its advanced sustainable Shell V-Power race fuel. 

The engineering project required more than two million digital fuel simulations to achieve operational readiness, said Tan Min Yih, senior vice-president of mobility at Shell.

Testing products virtually before physical deployment allows Shell to speed up its end-to-end iterative cycle, addressing manufacturing, supply chain logistics and carbon intensity tracking. 

For Scuderia Ferrari HP, this focused R&D directly supports the ongoing pursuit of marginal gains in a sport that measures times in the thousandths. 

Vasseur noted that the team’s engineering division runs continuous dynamometer tests on new fuels each month simply to optimise overall power unit performance, efficiency and reliability. 

“Every single 0.1 horsepower is making a difference,” he added. The margins on track reflect this reality – during the qualifying session in Malaysia on Oct 3, Leclerc finished just 35 thousandths of a second behind Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli. 

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For Shell, this trackside testing translates directly to retail, with 100 per cent of the performance-boosting technology used in Shell V-Power road fuel also used by Scuderia Ferrari HP on track, said Tan. 

Internal alignment is also critical to maximising such R&D development. “We want more performance, we want more reliability and more driveability,” Leclerc said, adding that because the team shares these core principles, “there’s no real conflicts and there’s no compromises to do anywhere”. 

Misaligned priorities can quickly derail this progress, noted Hamilton. 

“I have definitely been in experiences where the two drivers don’t want the same thing,” he said. “That means I’m going this way, he’s going that way, it means double resources going in separate ways and not maximising the team’s performance.”